Menu

An SEO audit is important for any website seeking to increase traffic. Thorough website audits are helpful for planning future strategies relating to keywords and creating more effective content. If you are planning an SEO audit for your website, you need to follow our comprehensive checklist to ensure nothing is left out during the process.

What Should an SEO Audit Cover?

Attention should be given to five main areas in order to complete a successful SEO audit.

Technical Analysis

For your website to be listed, it needs to be able to be identified and indexed by search engines. When checking SEO, focus on the following:

Analysis of how duplicate content is being identified.

Sitemap validation using XML sitemaps which make available information for search engines such as last updates, page hierarchy and public pages to be crawled.

Assessment of site speed and studying the load time, which is critical.

Analysis of backlinks i.e. the links leading into your site. Links coming in from poor quality sites or unrelated sites where your niche is concerned can harm your SEO.

Review Page Design

This includes evaluating ease of use, CTAs, overall design, and inter-page connection for a seamless flow on the website. This component is important in an SEO audit because it makes search engines able to make sense of your content. It also increases your chances of getting found by visitors.

Usability Audit

This involves measuring how easy your users find it to make use of your site, and to navigate to the information they seek. Incorporate the following into your usability checks on your website:

Relevant internal linking –internal links on from one page to another on your site is a great idea for reducing bounce rate and maintain the interest of visitors. During an SEO audit, make sure your pages are not overly saturated with links, and that the links present are not optimized over the top, which is unadvisable in SEO practice.

Easy navigation – the goal is for visitors to be able to find what they are looking for. There is no right or wrong way to present a site structure as long as the important features and information are easy to locate.

Semantic mark-up – with semantic mark-up, search engines are better able to index your site more accurately, creating rich snippets which users make use of to locate information that interests them.

Analyse Site Content

SEO requires organised and well-written content. Industry or brand-specific content that is focused on providing value to site users attracts more users and higher rankings. During SEO audit, assessment of content should be based on consistency and value.

On-Page Audit

On-page SEO factors to consider include title tags, Meta descriptions, and headers and sub-headers. Ignoring these could make you miss out on the opportunities a comprehensive SEO audit offers.

Google is certainly unrelenting in its fight against fake news and content that is considered offensive, disturbing, or clearly misleading, as it officially announced the Project Owl algorithm. According to the search engine, their algorithm was being updated in order to boost, authoritative content while penalising low-quality content, specifically with queries that could display offensive or misleading material.

Further, Google introduced a feedback mechanism for featured snippets and auto-complete suggestions to swiftly obtain feedback from users on search results that are not in line with their guidelines. Google’s search quality rater’s guidelines were also updated to aid the fight and check that the algorithms were working accordingly. Meanwhile, what do the new changes mean?

Boosting authoritative content

As a way to fight the fake and offensive content that appear in search results, Google is keen on pushing for authoritative content. Google tags as offensive, any content that encourages violence or hate against a group of people based on a number of criteria ranging from gender and race, to religion and disability. Also tagged as offensive is any content that contains racial slurs, detailed how-to information about dangerous or harmful activities, and other types of content users in a particular locale would find intensely upsetting.

Featured Snippets feedback form

A Featured Snippet is an informational box displayed at the top of search results, designed to have a profound influence on the search experience. Featured Snippets are becoming even more important with the rise of voice search as they are the default answer to a user’s question. Google introduced a feedback form that lets users pick from a variety of tags that can be used to describe the content, and a space to make comments or suggestions. While individual snippets are not going to see immediate removal, Google will use the data to adjust the algorithm to effect the necessary changes.

Autocomplete feedback link

Designed to save time and help make searches faster, autocomplete suggests possible queries to users, drawn from the most popular searches. While it is a useful feature, occasionally, autocomplete may offer suggestions that are offensive or inappropriate. Google has now introduced a new “report inappropriate predictions” link that lets users flag predictions as violent, hateful, sexually explicit, or any other tag the user feels describes the suggestions.

Conclusion

It will take some time before Project Owl will be seen to impact search results; nonetheless, Google is clearly determined to present users with legitimate results. Meanwhile, new sites are not expected to find it more difficult to rank higher in search; neither will big brands have any advantage over smaller ones.

Making useful information available and easily accessible is the main goal of Google and it dedicates itself to this cause by constantly seeking to improve the users’ search engine experience.

Google updates its algorithm from time to time with multiple updates happening within a day sometimes. The number of changes is between 500-600 updates per year. The updates are mostly minor and the results almost unnoticeable but there are some that cannot occur unnoticed because of the relative impact such updates have on the on page rankings in the search engine.

Whenever there is an algorithm update, Google may announce and give hints here and there about the impact of such updates while other times, the updates are done without any form of admittance or detail on the implication of such update from Google.

What is most important is whether the updates have noticeable impact on SERP.

The main question now is that, was there an update on Monday or Tuesday, June 19th or 20th?

The drift is nobody is sure what happened. We all know Google can be pretty secretive about their updates but most of the automated tracking tools;(Mozcast, Accutracker, SERPMetriccs, Rank Ranger, SEM Rush) except for Algoroo revealed that the algorithm may have been tweaked on either of the two days. They showed massive spikes and activity but not many people seem to catch up to it.

Updates with impact cause a lot of chatter that may have resulted in a lot of satisfaction or dissatisfaction among the SEO community but the expected activity that is supposed to be the immediate result of such massive update is missing. No one is screaming foul or livid about penalties.

The SEO community always give an insight into the impact of huge updates.

Barry Schwartz gives an insight into what may have happened but even that isn’t conclusive.

On Wednesday, April 26, Google’s homepage featured an animated doodle showing the Cassini spacecraft personified as a jolly triangular photographer taking pictures of a passing smiling Saturn, paparazzi-style. Designed by Nate Swinehart, the fun doodle was to put up to mark the beginning of the ‘Grand Finale’ of the spacecraft’s journey of two decades. On Wednesday, the Cassini started taking photos and measurements between Saturn and its rings, making the first of a series of orbits to help scientists gain more insight on the nature and origin of the planet’s rings.

A mission of exciting discovery

The landmark Saturn mission is a NASA project with backing from the Italian space agency (ASI) and the European Space Agency (ESP). The Cassini’s 2.2 billion mile journey began 20 years ago from Cape Canaveral in the United States in 1997, when the spacecraft left Earth on its way to our solar system’s second largest planet. The spacecraft reached Saturn 7 years later in 2014, when it began exploring around the planet and its satellites.

Over the years, numerous remarkable discoveries have been made and astonishing photos have been compiled into a stunning collection, including a picture of our tiny planet taken through Saturn’s rings. Early in April, when Cassini was exploring one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, it discovered the presence of molecular hydrogen, suggesting that the planet could support extraterrestrial life.

A glorious tragedy

Running out of rocket fuel, the Cassini spacecraft will plunge to its death on the 15th of September, 2017, ending its historic journey. NASA has to destroy the craft to avoid letting debris and microbes from Earth contaminate Saturn’s moons (Enceladus and Titan), cause disruption to whatever may exist there, or prevent us from finding out about the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. When the spacecraft dives into Saturn’s atmosphere, it will have many of its instruments on to ensure it keeps transmitting to Earth until the moment it burns up and gets destroyed. Before its final moment, Cassini will tell us what the planet’s atmosphere is comprised of.

Once it embarked on the first of 22 orbits around Saturn, the Cassini began a journey of no return as its path is not determined by thrusters anymore, but largely by the effects of gravity. No matter what the scientists at NASA do, the spacecraft will inevitably end up in Saturn’s atmosphere on said date.

It will be sad to see the Cassini go after seeing two decades of the phenomenal service it has rendered to science, expanding our knowledge and deepening our understanding of Saturn and its satellites. Nonetheless, it is a glorious ending to an astonishing journey of discovery.

To take advantage of the ever expanding trend of ecommerce, most small businesses now have an online presence – mostly through their websites.

While having a website is a good first step in positioning your business to reach a global audience and thus more customers, it is not the only step. You still have to let people know about the existence of your website. One reliable and highly recommended way to get your website more publicity is by optimising its SEO. This means optimising your website to be better found on search engine results, in order to increase its organic traffic.

To optimise your SMB’s website for local SEO UK, simply execute these following tips;

Optimising your website’s content.

You can accomplish this by inserting into your website’s content keywords or phrases that most local consumer of your products or services search for online. You can discover what these keywords are by using tools such as Google Trends.

Another effective way to optimise your site’s SEO via content is to mention something unique about the locality you are serving within your content. For example, if you are an architect serving London clients, your site can talk about some of London’s architectural landmarks. Search engines will rank site’s that do this higher than their local competitors that don’t. Also be sure to insert your city/region alongside a relevant keyword into your landing page title tag, H1 tag, URL, and image alt attributes.

Organise your website effectively.

This can be accomplished by having each headline and title tag on each page contain a keyword or phrase that will immediately intimate search engines and site visitors alike about what your site has to offer. You can also embed a Google map showing your business’ location into your landing page

For better results, you can also have your most important content featured on your homepage with a link leading to that content’s own page. That is, make sure your bestselling services and products stand out on your site. Said content should also have links referring to them from within the content of other pages.

Improve user experience

This is another useful way to improve your site’s local SEO UK as well as the engagement of your visitors. You can accomplish this by making your site more mobile friendly, especially since most online activity now occurs via mobile devices. Also ensure your site has good loading speeds that will motivate your visitors to keep searching through your site.

Further measures you can take to improve user experience include; having your business’ contact information at the top and bottom of each page, as well as placing headlines over each page to assure visitors they’ve come to the right place.

Lastly, local SEO UK can be improved on by ensuring the website’s design is one that facilitates movement across the site by crawling bots and customers alike.

With these simple steps, your SMB’s website’s local SEO UK will be greatly improved.

On March 27, 2017, Bing’s update to their policy on using trademarks as keywords went live. This means advertisers and marketers are now free to use trademarks in their ads, with a number of restrictions of course. The new changes applied to 10 countries. These countries are Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, France, Italy, UK, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore.

In Bing’s official announcement made by their Program Manager of Search Demand Policy, Melissa Alsoszatai-Petheo, the company made it clear that they would continue to disallow the use of trademarks in ad copy. They mentioned that fair use of a trademark in ad copy will continue to be allowed specifically for:

One of the factors the company seems to have considered before making the change is it will make it easier for advertisers to transfer their campaigns between the major search engines without having to optimise as much. The benefits are not restricted to the advertisers as the company expects that consumers will have a better experience. According to the official announcement, Bing had found that consumers often search for trademarked terms expecting to receive broader results.

Bing has always been stern with piracy, phishing, scams, scareware, misleading content, and other unethical practices. For instance, in 2016, their ad quality review reported that 130 million ads were rejected with 175,000 advertisers blocked. This is nowhere near Google’s 1.7 billion bad ads blocked in the same year but the company does its part. Bing’s decision to update their policy restricting the use of trademarks in keywords could place them on a level playing field with Google’s AdWords. However, Google is certainly way ahead of them, having allowed trademarks in keywords since 2014.

On the advantages of Bing’s update, Paul Smith of Search Creative points out that:

Advertisers will be able to optimise search engine results to their advantage by leveraging on trademarks that do not belong to them.

Enforcement of trademarks will become more consistent globally.

Advertisers will be able to transfer campaigns between search engines without having to tweak optimisation as much.

Consumers will benefit as they would begin to get a wider range of results, presenting them with more choices and improving the overall search experience.

Smith insists that while more advertising campaigns may be annoying, making searches broader can only yield better results. He advises that brand owners be aware of the development and consider focusing their efforts on retaining a strong online presence, especially through multiple search engines.

The days of having to enter loads of exact match keywords are soon coming to an end. Over the next few months, Google will effect a series of changes to the way AdWords processes keywords.

What happens now is if you sell children’s clothes, you’ll likely include “children’s clothes” in your list of keywords. For a potential customer to find you, they would have to type “children’s clothes”. If you want to ensure more people find you, you’ll add different variations such as “clothes for children”, “kids’ clothes”, and so on. Of course, this can get tiring and on many occasions, you may be unable to target all the possible keywords.

Because Google understands that this can be a difficult matter for advertisers, they’ve decided to expand close variant matching to help advertisers reach more of their customers. These are the changes they’re making:

Ignoring function words

Google is going to start ignoring function words as long as they don’t change the meaning of the keyword. Function words are prepositions such as “to”, conjunctions such as “but”, articles such as “an”, and other words that don’t alter the intention behind the user’s search. For example, the “in” in “restaurants in Vancouver” can be ignored because it doesn’t change the meaning. However, the “from” in “flights from Vancouver” doesn’t have the same meaning as “flights to Vancouver”.

Words can appear in any order

An exact match keyword will be matched with different queries even if the words are reordered. The only condition is the meaning must remain the same and retain the intent behind the user’s search. Using the same examples above, “restaurants Vancouver” is the same as “Vancouver restaurants”. However, “Vancouver to Toronto” is certainly not the same as “Toronto to Vancouver”.

These changes are to be effected over the next few months starting with English and Spanish, with other languages following through the rest of the year. Google expects to see up to 3% more exact match clicks.

What do advertisers think?

On day 2 of Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West, Mindstream Media’s Stephanie Cheek shared her thoughts on Google’s AdWords update. She explained that advertisers would have to retrain themselves to use and think of exact match keywords differently. Mindstream Media’s report from the panel discussion states that many advertisers were uncomfortable with giving up the level of control they have with exact match.

Scotty D on Google’s advertiser community believes the update is certainly a step in the right direction. He points out that 20% of searches in the US are now by voice, making it harder to pinpoint all query variations that may capture a user’s intent.

Location extensions are a Google AdWords feature that allows for the adding of location data concerning a business into an ad. But why are these extensions important? And how can you use them to your advantage?

Location extensions assist people in discovering the location of a sought after local business with the aid of Google Maps and Google.com. Doesn’t matter what the business offers. As long as it’s listed and it has a physical location, Google will help you find it.

With the help of Google Display Network ads, a store’s photos, working hours, and location are automatically uploaded for the benefit of shoppers who are interested in what said business has to offer. A good example would be of an individual interested in limited edition sneakers browsing online and coming across local information of a little known store selling limited edition, one of a kind Nikes. This would mean thanks to local extensions, our friend with the sneaker fetish can visit this neighbourhood store he’s never heard of and maybe find something interesting.

To help users along, Google has started automatically adding location extensions to Google Display Network ads that are eligible when a user expresses interest in a certain kind of business and is in the locality of said business.

As a business owner, what you can profit from using Google AdWords location extensions is quite extensive. Such as, but not limited to;

Acquiring extra ad space for communicating your business’ value: With local extensions, you’re no longer limited to only traditional costly methods of advertising or social media. Now you can reach potential customers who are in the actual vicinity of your business and are looking for your specific services

Encouraging potential customers to walk through your store’s front door: Potential customers who would have never known of your business’s existence now have a higher likelihood of visiting you. This is thanks to location extension’s targeted approach.

It also improves your Click through Rate by up to 10%, which in turn improves your Quality Score and reduces your advertising costs.

With location extensions, customers have more ways to interact with your ad instead of just viewing it. The can click on the ad’s headline, or hit a “click-to-call” button, or better yet, get directions to your business’s location. This added functionality comes at no extra cost to your business because you’ll still be charged the same Cost Per Click regardless if the user chooses to visityour website or your local store, or call.

With this information you can now decide if location extensions are worth it to your business and how to go about benefiting from them. Up your business’ publicity by making the best out of this added feature from Google.

Successful search marketing has a lot to do with Google’s search algorithm. As a search marketer, developer or SEO expert, you must be conversant with the latest Google algorithm trends to pull off a successful marketing campaign because it relates directly with:

There is need for every search marketer, developer and SEO expert to understand the dynamics of Google’s algorithm as it undergoes frequent major and minor modifications every often because it is essential to the success of their business. It is important you keep your ears tuned to these changes, especially the major ones which have a considerably weightier impact on the overall success of your business. Google Webmaster YouTube Channel is a useful resource that keeps you informed on latest trends in the SEO world.

The most successful search marketers, SEO experts and developers are those who do due diligence in keeping up with Google’s ever changing algorithm which does have a significant impact on search engine optimisation and ranking that translate into organic website traffic.

To be on top of your game as an SEO expert, marketer or developer, you must have adequate information on latest trends in search marketing and SEO best practices. Google was said to have made a major change in its search algorithm over the past few weeks, on March 8th to be precise.

Latest Google Algorithm Ranking – March 8th 2017 Update

It was reported recently on the 8th of March 2017 that there was a perceived major update in Google’s search algorithm known as Fred. Google’s Gary Illyes recently confirmed the update which was a mere speculation before now. There were, however, obvious signs that indicated there was a major Google ranking update before it was confirmed as it already had its toll on the SEO world with hundreds of websites recording between 50% to 90% decline from Google’s organic search.

According to Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land, the sites that were hardest hit by Fred are sites that place revenue generation above user experience. These are sites which he claims are heavy on ads with low value content. Google’s recent major update Schwartz says is link related. Studies have it that there were significant changes in Google’s rankings in the first week of February which were link and content related. January 10 also saw a momentous change in the SEO world after Google warned against intrusive interstitials. “Fred” is, however, what SEO experts search engine marketers and developers need to be more concerned about now.

The safer thing to do is to go low on ads if your website is already heavy on this and focus more on quality content that will be useful to everyone who visits your website. The most important thing you should keep in mind is user experience.

Entrepreneurship is the order of the day and everyone is take advantage of the new media revolution to cash in on the digital marketing space. This way, without hassles, products and services can be advertised for wider outreach, while bloggers can also drag ads to their blogs or websites.

The next dilemma is making the choice between google and bing for the ad space. Google surely has more popularity from over the years and has a majority of the digital marketing pie. However, Bing is gradually becoming a force to be reckoned with in the search engine online services war.

The growth as mentioned above is by no mistake. Several innovations have set Bing Ad on this rising trend.

It offers less competition. This is crucial for new users. No competition hassles since majority are still on google adwords. At same time, it offers cheaper Cost per click (CPC) compared to google.

Better device targeting. Brings out features directed at individual devices. Sort of a personalisation.

Better social extention

Search demographics can be better controlled

It doesn’t force close variants on you.

Even with these advantages, Bing is not resting on its oars as it brings new reporting features for better user experience regularly. I will be mentioning 3 of the major new reporting features:

Performance metrics. Many users have multiple accounts and keeping tabs on progress made becomes a major issue. Performance metrics are new reporting features that help assess the performances of your accounts and compare performances between periods, as well as changes

Data splitting: New reporting features allow you split your data and analyse them in segments. This way analysis of performance can be scaled down to a particular day of the week, or quarter of the month. The data can even be split based on the type of devices clickers used.

Data presentation: Performance metrics can be a lot of data, formulas and so on. For faster assimilation data presentation features have been added. Now the data can be presented as linear graphs, charts and so on.

More and more users are beginning to recognise the user friendliness of Bing Ads and as long as the digital marketing space gets wider and more competitive, Bing Ads will continue to add more attractive reporting features.